The newspaper’s series on police misconduct in the matter of coerced confessions and false imprisonment of innocent African-American men (“Cops and confessions,” News, December, 2001) was outstanding and your editorial “Double standard on cocaine” (Jan. 23) was a diligent look at a serious problem in this society. But it is a typically tardy realization of what’s going on in the minority communities when it comes to the “Just Us” system.
Last summer, I urged authorities to press certain celebrities to say who their drug sources were. The media took absolutely no notice and gave short shrift to my comment. Since then, we still have heard stories about actors beating drug cases by agreeing to a “little” rehab. These cases illustrate the cause of the disparity in the drug problem. The real culprit in this legal oppression is the prosecutor.
Prosecutors enjoy having the power to assign blame and it’s always directed at minorities. And when they have enough scalps, they run for elective office on that reckoning. You only need to look at Court TV. The “expert” commentary usually comes from former prosecutors, as if defense attorneys don’t count in the legal equation. Once these prosecutors become judges, they tend to side with practicing prosecutors. Even with all the hand-wringing in this city about the 667 murders last year, reports failed to consider the fact that the state’s attorney determines what death is “murder” as opposed to manslaughter.
For this reason, I, as the committeeman of the 34th Ward, am requiring any judicial candidate who wants his or her name on my election day palm cards to submit his or her sentencing history to me and my organization.
When hearings were held in 1995 to repeal mandatory sentences in crack versus powder drug cases, police detectives testified that street corner dealers were easier to catch than the affluent cocaine user living in gated communities or in expensive houses. That’s the first line of bigotry. The next is the way prosecutors go out of their way not to do too much damage or to disrupt the lives of any white person accused of distributing or using cocaine. You see examples all the time on TV.
Cocaine is a scourge to any society. So let’s be real about dealing with it instead of using the problem as justification to warehouse minority men and women.
